Links 10/9/2025

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Astronomers discover the most ‘pristine’ star in the known universe Phys.org

Brains of Stranded Dolphins Showed Signs of Alzheimer’s Disease Science Alert

Gold nanoparticle nasal spray delivers lithium safely to brain without harming kidneys Interesting Engineering

Gold takes a breather after safe-haven demand fuels record run Channel News Asia

Climate/Environment

New Zealand oceans warming 34% faster than global average, putting homes and industry at risk, report finds The Guardian. “Sea levels that reach that height mean that a coastal storm that used to happen every 100 years could start happening every year.”

Uber driver charged in connection with starting the Palisades Fire LAist

When the next fire hits, you may be on your own. These are the issues that plague LA County’s emergency response LAist

Pandemics

More measles cases confirmed in South Carolina, Michigan as US total climbs to 1,563 CIDRAP

China?

China tightens rare earth export curbs, taking aim at military and chip applications CNN

China Accelerates Oil Reserve Site Build Amid Stockpiling Drive Reuters

10 pct of GDP defense spending demand from US disregards livelihoods of Taiwan residents Global Times

India

Exclusive: Traders seek yuan payment from Indian state buyers of Russian oil, sources say Reuters

South of the Border

Report: Trump Administration Working on Strategy To ‘Eliminate’ Venezuela’s Maduro Antiwar

Colombian president says US military struck Colombian boat, killed his citizens ABC News

Colombia: President Petro Denounces ‘Political Coup’ Following Suspension of Electoral Consultation (+Cepeda) Orinoco Tribune

GOP senators sink measure to halt Trump’s strikes on alleged drug boats The Hill

Delay in US financial support for Argentina rattles markets El Pais

Syraqistan

Hamas and Palestinian Factions Agree to Gaza Ceasefire; Trump Confirms Deal Was Reached Drop Site

Netanyahu Government Set to Approve Israel-Hamas Deal in Gaza: Here’s What Happens Next Haaretz

Israel’s Ben-Gvir storms Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, calls for ‘Gaza victory’ Al Arabiya

Marco Rubio to join Paris conference on Gaza ‘post-war’ plans The Cradle

Israel military intercepts another Gaza-bound aid flotilla New Arab

Genocide two years on: It is the West, not Gaza, that must be deradicalised Jonathan Cook

A Philadelphia company’s obscured support for killing Palestinians with autonomous flying bombs All-Source Intelligence

Over 50,000 children under five suffering acute malnutrition in Gaza Middle East Eye

UN says 83% of Gaza City structures damaged amid Israeli attacks Anadolu Agency

European Disunion

German industrial output falls to 2005 levels as auto sector craters FT

Von der Leyen hopes her caring, sharing side will win round critics Politico

France’s Le Pen vows to block any government AFP

Europe’s Walls Tremble as Political Crises Multiply Simplicius

New Not-So-Cold War

Russia, Speaking With One Voice, Warns Trump and NATO Larry Johnson

Ukraine war briefing: Analysts flag Kremlin scare campaign against use of Tomahawks The Guardian. Problematic framing.

Tomahawk for Ukraine: Never-ending Saga of the Wunderwaffe to Turn the Tide Black Mountain Analysis

Ukrainian Media About Gaps In The Frontline And Other Failures Moon of Alabama

ELECTRIC WAR ON THE UKRAINE BATTLEFIELD IS TURNING THE LIGHTS ON IN THE KREMLIN John Helmer

Russia named top security threat in Moldova’s military strategy TASS

Trump 2.0

Stephen Miller says Trump has ‘plenary authority’ over military. What does that mean? USA Today

Urgent: ICE is Lying to the American Public Aaron Parnas

The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next The Bulwark

Trump administration officials seriously discussing invoking Insurrection Act, sources say NBC News

Pete Hegseth’s Crypto History The Nation

Weimar Republic

Gov. Pritzker responds to Trump threat to jail him, mayor over ICE: ‘Come and get me’ Chicago Sun-Times

Police State Watch

Secretive Watchlisting Center Executing NSPM-7 Ken Klippenstein

ICE closes detention oversight group in shutdown despite surge in detainees WaPo

Anatomy of a Beating – The UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment TRT World (Video). In-depth breakdown of seminal moment when police declared Zionist allegiances. In retrospect, a harbinger of what was to come.

Abortion

‘Full of Sh*t’ Texas Cops Lied About Why They Used AI Surveillance to Track Woman Who Had Abortion Common Dreams

Immigration

“Why Sergio?”: Deportation ends 36-year dream for celebrated Waco chef Texas Tribune. Guy even visited W’s ranch.

Why the Decline in the Foreign-Born in the Monthly Household Survey in 2025 Is Very Likely Real Center for Immigration Studies. Source background.

Groves of Academe

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department. ProPublica

Our Famously Free Press

Legacy Journalists from NYT, CNN Are Mentors in a Fellowship Founded for Pro-Israel “Information War” Drop Site

In 2 Years of Gaza Genocide, Sunday Shows on NBC, ABC and CNN Have Not Featured a Single Palestinian Guest In These Times

The Friendly Skies

Air Traffic Controllers Were Already Stretched Thin. Then Came the Shutdown. NOTUS

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Healthcare?

Medicaid Expansion Linked to Better Cancer Survival at 5 Years MedPage Today

Imperial Collapse Watch

Gold as ‘debasement trade’ doesn’t add up FT

UN to cut 25% of global peacekeeping force amid US funding shortfall Euronews

Nothing Left Inside Novum Newsletter

In a Private Park in North Carolina, Confederate Statues Are Rising Again New York Times (resilc)

Political Symbols and Social Order: Confederate Monuments and Performative Violence in the Post-Reconstruction U.S. South American Political Science Review. Commentary:

AI

Uber Driver Who Allegedly Caused the Palisades Fire Used ChatGPT to Imagine a Forest Burning Gizmodo

Generative AI’s Impending Death By A Thousand Rake-Smacks What We Lost

Economy

OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals Bloomberg. This is what now accounts for 40 percent of GDP growth:

Mr. Market

AI Is the Market, and the Market Is the Government Kyla Scanlon

Class Warfare

For older Americans, the cost of poverty is 9 years of life, study finds CBS News

This Ain’t Your Grandad’s Rural America Hickman’s Hinterlands

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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21 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “Von der Leyen hopes her caring, sharing side will win round critics”

    Had to check and yes, it is a Politico article. I was actually expecting it to be The Onion or the Babylon Bee instead.

    ‘Vee haf tools to make you to make you like us!’

    Reply
    1. bertl

      The woman is deranged. Sensible men spend years building up a powerful trading bloc and the Atlanticist Russophobes turn it into the failing Fourth Reich, and the bloody woman and her fellow chucklehead conspirators with Nazis glistering on their family trees decide to go to war with Russia asap. Bismarck must be turning in his grave from laughing at the amoeba who now govern what’s left of Europe before the rest falls to the bottomless ocean of contempt their own people, let alone the other peoples of the world, feel for for them.

      Reply
  2. ocypode

    Gold as ‘debasement trade’ doesn’t add up FT

    Not sure what to think of this piece. Couldn’t debasement be one of the factors driving gold prices up? Maybe not even the principal one, but still. Bond prices could be horizontal for a variety of different factors that “annul” or “overcome” the debasement pressure. That said, I personally think the gold rally is simple liquidity preference and the dollar isn’t looking to be as trustworthy as it used to be. Who knows what the government will do? Maybe people want to have a plan B.

    Reply
  3. ambrit

    With the site admins forbearance:
    Got an e-mail from the largest local Hospital/Clinic group stating that next year they would be “out of network” for the United Healthcare Medicare Advantage Plan. This means higher co-pays and general costs for those using the United Plan than traditional Medicare. This is a “retirement destination” region. Could that be the reason for this?
    Don’t know why we got this missive. We are on Traditional Medicare.
    See:
    Attention United Healthcare members on Medicare Advantage plans. Effective January 1, Hattiesburg Clinic will no longer be in network with them. This will mean you either can no longer use the plan at all (HMO plan) or pay substantially more out of pocket (PPO plans).
    The Annual Enrollment period begins next Wednesday, October 15.

    Sign of the times.
    Privatize the profits. Socialize the losses.

    Reply
  4. The Rev Kev

    “Russia, Speaking With One Voice, Warns Trump and NATO”

    I think that by now the Russians have written off Trump as somebody that they can negotiate with. He has fully aligned himself with the Neocons and is still trying to find a way to pressure Russia into negotiations where they lose the peace. The Russians have recently said that any momentum achieved through the Alaska meeting is now gone which is bad. But Russia is now telling Trump that if they “give” Tomahawks to the Ukrainians, then Russian-American relations are now gone. They know that it would be actually the US firing those Tomahawks into Russia but I think that there is a threat to Trump here. That if the US fires Tomahawks into Russia then Trump can forget all those lucrative deals that Russia was suggesting to him such as oil, gas, Arctic resources and all the rest of it. All g-o-n-e gone. And that is something that would grab Trump’s attention because you are talking big money here.

    Reply
    1. GM

      I think that by now the Russians have written off Trump as somebody that they can negotiate with.

      That wasn’t evident in Putin’s scandalous appearance in Valdai, where he debased himself more than Yeltsin ever did. We have not heard anything since then to overturn what he said — yes, Ryabkov made some more aggressive statements yesterday, but Ryabkov has been making them for a long time, while the Kremlin has been doing, well… you saw it last week.

      At least back in the 1990s the US was not killing people in Russia directly and was not destroying the power grid in multiple Russian regions with its with its GMLRS systems, which is exactly what was happening right as Putin was slobbering all over Trump in one of his main annual public events.

      Also, it was extremely inappropriate to talk about Charlie Kirk while never mentioning the many thousands of Russian directly killed by the US over the last three years. WTF???

      It was also very revealing about Putin’s Russia — to embrace a right wing lunatic like Charlie Kirk. And very telling about why the war is going the way it is.

      This is a rerun of the GPW, but Putin steadfastly refuses to fight it. And he refuses to fight it because in order to fight it he has to acknowledge that it is a rerun of the GPW, but if he associates it with the GPW, then automatically it follows that the country will gravitate back towards its condition from that time. Can’t have that — it means exposing the moral, intellectual and geopolitical bankruptcy of the post-1991 regime, and after all Putin is there to safeguard that regime, not to return to what was pre-1991.

      The problem is, if he doesn’t do the latter, the country is doomed. And yet what did he do? He doubled down on ideologically embracing the exact opposite, and in the form of a key figure in the enemy camp no less…

      Reply
      1. Yves Smith

        You have not been paying attention. Putin walked that back in an interview shortly thereafter, IIRC with Pavel Zarubin. Also the Deputy Foreign Minister has just said that the Alaska process was as failure and none of the attempts to normalize relations have gone anywhere.

        Reply
    2. Arby

      The EU has 29 large scale LNG facilities which each cost between $5 billion and $10 billion. Russia has more than 29 Oreshniks.

      Reply
      1. The Rev Kev

        I don’t think that they would need to do that. The leadership of the EU is destroying the European nations all by themselves. They are de-industrializing the countries, racking up debts of hundreds of billions of dollars, cutting back on pensions, holidays, education & infrastructure and all for the purpose of what? To save Zelenski. Give another 20 years and the EU leadership will have successfully turned Europe into a pastoral society.

        Reply
      2. gf

        The Oreshniks are meaningless unless they have about 40,000 of them if the idea is to expand the war beyond the Ukraine.

        As Brian Berledick says Russia, was using 4000 missiles per year and the Ukraine is still operating.

        If you expand the war to 3 – 4 times the area of Ukraine you better be ready.

        Reply
  5. JohnA

    Re Ukraine war briefing: Analysts flag Kremlin scare campaign against use of Tomahawks The Guardian.

    Intro in bold: Ukrainian counteroffensive causing heavy losses for Russia. What we know on day 1,324
    – well, this is based on a claim by Zelensky and backed by analysis from the Kagan family Institute for the Study of War.

    Both the above have zero objective credibility. The POW and dead body swaps are embarrassingly one-sided in terms of numbers. Compounded by Zelensky’s reluctance to accept KIA and MIA numbers to avoid payouts to the families of such. He can’t keep the grift going if he has to share his loot with those outside his own corrupt circle.

    Reply
  6. Acacia

    Re: Gaza ceasefire

    “This is a risk, but we trusted President Trump to be the guarantor of all the commitments made,” said Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader …

    A risk, he says. Sigh.

    Reply
  7. The Rev Kev

    “New Zealand oceans warming 34% faster than global average, putting homes and industry at risk, report finds”

    Now this article has me wondering. Peter Thiel and a lot of his rich buddies have prepared bolt holes in New Zealand for themselves for when people come for them. But we know how the wealthy always choose coastal homes such as Zuckerberg did in Hawaii. So it would be irony upon irony if such people caused weather chaos through all their energy-hungry data centers, fled to New Zealand when the bill came due, only to find their coastal homes there being ravaged due to weather chaos.

    Reply
  8. GrimUpNorth

    Re Gold as ‘debasement trade’ doesn’t add up

    This FT article is actually worth reading, although the title should be “Gold, we haven’t got a clue – A summary”.

    Very weak arguments against the debasement trade here and in fact 2/3 of the way down it actually says it might be. I’ve yet to find anyone that can explain currency markets to me, and I have always assumed it is heavily controlled by Central banks and that the desire of China to keep their currency low allows this whole unstable thing to keep going.

    Reply
  9. lyman alpha blob

    I don’t follow California politics all that closely, but my impression of Katie Porter has been that she’s a decent politician with the interest of the people at heart, at least more so than the other hair mannequins on offer like Newsom. I was also under the impression that the Democrats were going to show their “fightin’ for” bona fides by cursing up a blue streak to show their toughness and connection with the common people.

    Apparently that latter bit is only appropriate for absolute phonies trying to p0wn the rubes, because when Katie Porter recently expressed a little frustration, the pile on from both sides began.

    Knives out for Katie – https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/katie-porter-viral-videos-campaign-disaster-00599452

    And do note that not only is Politico reporting on this story, they also started the pile on by releasing the video in the first place. One wonders which other candidate put them up to it, what the price was, and who made the decision to make it go viral?

    Reply
  10. MicaT

    Solar.
    The issue in Spain or anywhere with enough solar and wind to a lesser degree is you do need grid stabilization.
    This comes in a few forms. For inverters ( which take the solar/sun and make it into what goes into the grid) there are two variants. Grid forming and grid support. Grid forming means it acts just like a generator, but even faster. If it sees the grid frequency start to drop or rise or voltage or Power factor or a few other things happen instantly adds or subtracts to keep things exactly where they need to be. These have been out for at least 5 if not 10 yrs. And older inverters can be retrofitted. Grid support inverters have been out for almost 15 yrs and they can’t do everything the grid forming ones can but close. Again, upgradable.
    The other option is battery/inverter grid support. These are not necessarily peaker plants but are designed to be able to back up the grid instantly which normal peaker plants such as gas can’t do.
    All of what Spain needs to keep its high penetration of renewables working correctly has been available for 10-15 yrs. Why it’s not been installed or upgraded is the question.The issue is not solar, wind, batteries.
    All we have to look at is Texas a few years ago, they almost completely went down which had nothing to do with solar and wind as there was almost zero of each.

    Reply
  11. The Rev Kev

    “In a Private Park in North Carolina, Confederate Statues Are Rising Again”

    I always thought of the push to remove those statues as part of Cancel Culture. Well it was never going to work and all that is happening is that statues are finding new homes on private property. Here it is 160 years after the end of the US Civil War and I do not think that people have yet to come to terms with this war and with lots of groups wanting to put their own spin on history such as the “Lost Cause” do not help. That fact that more Americans died in the Civil war than every other war America has fought combined means that you cannot ignore it. The efforts that the Union did in defeating the Confederacy also should be remembered and you cannot do that by trying to cancel a whole era. But the whole thing has become so partisan that any sort of reconciliation will be extremely difficult.

    Reply

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